A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology vs. Goldie - Timeless

State of Mind, Sea of Tears and You & I are the ones that never really did it for me.

Adrift isn't that great either.

Spring Heel Jack - There Are Strings deserves to get mentioned in the discussion of best DnB LPs of 95. I've played it more than either BST or Timeless.

As a stand alone cut, I could see how Sea of Tears would underwhelm, maybe sound too watered down in the context of its genre. But I do love how spacious the beatless sections are. And I think it fits well as a deep cut in the album.

<3 sea of tears and you & i, state of mind is just meh

Yeah I don't even really take issue with "Sea of Tears", but I see how it might put others off.

"You And Me" is straight fire beautiful though.

State of Mind, Sea of Tears and You & I are the ones that never really did it for me

You & Me, surely? My second favourite on there (after Kemistry).

You may laugh, but IMO Self Evident Truth does some of the things Goldie attempted in Timeless (formal experiments, jazzy and ambient moods) with more interesting and less coffeetable-ish results.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, September 5, 2012 9:46 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To be fair to this album it goes in a lot harder than I ever remember when it's not actually playing. The ostentatious four minute ambient intro probably doesn't help.

playing "Life Unfolds His Misery" right now and this is an impossible question to answer

Gothian Slip there

surprised nobody's recorded a black metal track called "Life Unfolds His Misery" tho

some dude grunting "CHOKE ON IT" before the drop

it took me 0.000001 seconds to vote for timeless

― the late great

Seconded.

gave timeless a listen for the first time in a while this afternoon and now feel confident about voting for BST.

BST is gonna win on contrarian obscureness quotient and/or finley's rainbow being better than anything else imo

BST doesn't seem particularly obscure at this point though - its rep has grown a lot since / coinciding with the reissue a few years ago.

Like, both albums ended up on FACT's 100 albums of the 90s list, but BST chimes in with that entire sensibility (i.e. the one that considers all uk dance music as an idea to be reverse engineered from Digital Mystikz) better than Timeless does (though that disparity disappears if we're talking pre-Timeless Goldie or the first four years of Metalheadz) - and indeed BST was number 4 on the list...

It's the same dynamic that makes Groove Chronicles more feted today than MJ Cole.

its rep has grown a lot since / coinciding with the reissue a few years ago.

Did it's rep grow as a result of it not being in print, though? Timeless has been dollar bin fodder for ages; less mystique

Yes, I think that's right too. I think that mystique is like pressure that builds and is released at the time that the album then becomes readily accessible again - like a spring.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

mystique is like the perfect goldie tune title too. i've never really been able to get past the sludgy sound of BST. Jah the seventh seal is the best thing for me on either record. can't believe someone called goldie's production flat upthread, that track sounds like it's coming from another dimension.

"Jah The Seventh Seal" is great but I think I would always have to go with "Angel" or (possibly)
"Kemistry" as best - the incongruous mixture of light and dark that Goldie managed on those tunes seems like his greatest contribution IMO.

yeah what as it bjork said about jungle? "exploding with fierce joy" or something. describes a lot of timeless, imo

Seriously I always try to imagine what it would have been like to hear "Angel" in 1993, what a mindf**k it would have seemed.

ha, my love of jah the 7th is probably a by-product of Kodwo Eshun's description of it more than anything else. i really need to listen to the whole thing again. i remember my mad anticipation of the release though.

The only way I can really conceptualize this is that on the one hand Black Secret Technology might be the best album ever, on the other hand Saint Angel is the impossible groove.

Yeah "Saint Angel" is insane isn't it, jungle idealised?

It's hard for me to even describe, but the way the beat sort of runs on, stutters and keeps falling down does my head in.

uh-uh--uh!

exactly!

i think this specific trick was very influential on ill blu, for one, I always think of it as the faltering gallop.

although it's less streamlined than that on "saint angel"

it WAS a complete mindfuck tim

my brain didn't even process jungle as music when i first heard it in 93, it just sounded like someone had strung neon firecrackers all throughout a two bad mice track and was detonating them every ten seconds

Regardless of the ambition (double album, extra long tracks, self-delcaring mainstream-bustin' genre flagbearer) I felt the sound design on Timeless was a benchmark for years and still its saving grace, altho no more than FSOL at the same time. It's only the thematic ideas being often so overbearing in new-agey-ness (dolphins maaan) that hamper it (again see FSOL and also BT's 'Ima' which was like a deep house equivalent to this in a few ways), plus this general reaction people often have against prog-like epics compared to something seen as edgier (Timeless is simultaneously aiming at innovation but also a jazz-based musical obedience probably down to the influence and encouragement of 4Hero) and more instant. Possibly some prefer BST because it sounds more 'bedroomy' and more raw yet more 'secretive' - less personal (Gerald, unlike celeb-in-waiting Goldie, not wanting to tell you all about himself, heart on sleeve).

and also BT's 'Ima' which was like a deep house equivalent to this in a few ways

This is so true! Although in my memory (I no longer have my copy) 'Ima' was more proggy than deep? Maybe deep-prog.

ha, my love of jah the 7th is probably a by-product of Kodwo Eshun's description of it more than anything else. i really need to listen to the whole thing again. i remember my mad anticipation of the release though.

― jed_, Tuesday, 11 September 2012 01:36 (12 hours ago) Bookmark

Dillinja's Jah the Seventh Seal is a magnified detail from the Timeless
canvas, a slowed-down blow-up of one hyperdimension. Breaks become chains as time turns to metal. Rhythm phaseshifts from needlepoint to
industrial in a war between machine lifeforms on the metallic plateaux.

Two drumbreaks are processed until they rattle like chrome snaketails,
panning in opposite ways around your head. When they meet they
swallow each other and reverse backwards. Simultaneously, machinic
groans and wrenching metallic sighs heave and drift across the
overlapping orbits of both breaks.

These arhythmic noises compel a kind of bodily seizure, an agonizing
muscular crisis, as if the motor coordination needed for walking, let
alone dancing, has just crashed from too much sensation. The seething
metal fatigue of Jah the Seventh Seal induces outbreaks of literally
headwreckin' synapse-warping. Your head becomes this giant muscle,
this mindless, agonized organ that doesn't know where to put itself.

(d/led pdf & ocr, don't worry i'm not insane)

This is so true! Although in my memory (I no longer have my copy) 'Ima' was more proggy than deep? Maybe deep-prog.

I would have definitely tagged it as prog, I mean " Deep Skies"

Lol at that Kodwo Eshun description... I tried to read More Brilliant Than the Sun at least two times, but each time I just couldn't go on after the first 50 pages or so. It felt like he had some interesting ideas, but they were buried to deep within his post-futurist techno poetry.

congrats at least on not saying THR RHYTHMATRIX kodwo

does he go on to talk about "the paranormal in four form" or is that a different chapter?

post-futurist techno poetry good, intersting ideas bad

Timeless just edges it over BST for me, but re: the discussion upthread you can count me in as one of the weirdos that prefers Parallel Universe to both.

weirdo

i feel like BST and parallel universe are more "subtle" in the mike skinner sense of the word (ie "boring")

whereas goldie's grabs you by the neck and says DRUM AND BASS MOTHERFUKER, HOUR LONG SYMPHONIC SUITE TO FOLLOW!!!!!!!!!

BST feels to me that it has aged in a different way from Timeless; like BST has bits where I think "I can see how this appealed so much to me" while Timeless has parts that still just grab and appeal in the same way, even though they don't have that same impact of the strange they did then.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I should've kept this poll open longer. Or perhaps it's that I regret having voted with my gut, not having actually listened to Timeless in years. I listened to Timeless so much in the mid-90s, that I kind of exhausted all the sense of wonder it had for me. I came to BST very slowly, a track here, a track there, over the course of many years. Eventually, I consumed it whole and gushed at how raw and enigmatic it seems.

I also recall Burial referring to it as a major influence around the time he was making Untrue (I think). The inspiration seems pretty clear, and adds a poignant layer to the legacy of BST.

Timeless has come to be so heavily associated with going to raves and driving up the coast, and doing all kinds of things in the 90s, that it's harder for me to listen to with fresh ears. And as nashwan touched on, Goldie's future celeb status also placed too many concrete associations in my brain when I listen to it.

I initially expected results like this, but after hearing so many spirited defenses of Timeless, expected this to be much closer - and wasn't actually sure which would come out on top.

Damn, thought I'd have the chance to sneak in and throw a vote Timeless' way, took way longer than I thought to dig up my ropey CD of BST. FWIW I think Timeless has regained a lot of mystique (or at least I've seen a lot more referencing of it late, inc. an installation playing "Mother" heh) - the whole new age-yness seems to vibe in w/a lot of art school kids/internet art/etc in the uh Lamp zone atm, lot of ~pristine~/dolphins/etc aesthetics going around.

but damn thank you for the tip

28 Gun Bad Boy isn’t up there but is available for streaming on Apple Music? Odd.

Anyway I think a lot of these are in fact white label releases - e.g. I know “Kicking Da Jungle Beat” was one of the white label tracks he put out in 1994.

Probably exaggerating above about these being better than BST but it is all great and sometimes spectular - I particularly like “Beat Dis” (probably 1993?).

i was rereading this thread last night and realized i've only ever known the single disc version of timeless. correcting this atm

I need to revisit both of these. I feel like I wasn't quite ready for them in my dumbass teens.

Timeless (always the double LP version for me) would get my vote quickly but am quite interested in which version of BST stands above (presumably the one on bandcamp?). Can confirm that my CD copy is very tinny and bass lacking.

I've probably listened to LTJ Bukem's Producer 01 the most, come to think of it.

I've never managed to crack Black Secret Technology despite having had it in my collection for years. Will give it another go.

btw i would like to make it clear that anyone who would dare diss "you & me" itt is dead to me

tuomas debunked this a few years ago i guess, but i have the 2008 version of bst and i have never thought "oh this lacks bass." it is still a really weird-sounding record though

(feature not flaw imo)

The only version of BST that sounds worse than the others is the second mid-90s CD version with the weird pink-ish cover. All the versions with the original purple-ish artwork are fine, though the arrangements have always sounded a bit quiet compared to most D&B even from that era, so a lot of people keep waiting/looking for a louder version that does not and will never exist.

"You and Me" is lovely.

I think there's really no filler on the single-disc version of Timeless. I would have once put "State of Mind" and "Sea of Tears" in that category, but i'm older and wiser now.

Thinking about the D&B rankings on that Fact 90s list again. Remove the surrounding noise and it's:

BTS > Icons' 'Emotions with Intellect' > Timeless > DJ Krust's 'Genetic Manipulation' EP > Photek's 'Modus Operandi' > T-Power's 'Self-Evident Truth of an Intuitive Mind' > Source Direct's 'Exorcise the Demons.

I mean this is Fact, so go figure, but I think this ranking says a lot about weird retrospective views of 90s D&B.

Like, that Icons album is fine, but just feels really surplus-to-requirements for me, and elevating it feels like a sop to a 'real heads know' notion of the genre that gets things entirely the wrong-way-about - like, yes, the album was unavailable for ages, but arguably that's more because no one particularly needed a pretty and intricate but personality-free mid-90s jungle album at a time when the music was already pivoting to head in another direction. It's actually very much the ambition and risk of 'bad taste' that infects albums like Timeless and New Forms that makes them so valuable in the context of a genre that was primarily dancefloor/singles/DJ-mix focused.

I've come around to liking 'You and Me' and the other tracks I dismissed back in 2012 (apart from 'Adrift'), would definitely vote for Timeless today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FR0thRsgMY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7w-grvkXtQ

The only version of BST that sounds worse than the others is the second mid-90s CD version with the weird pink-ish cover. All the versions with the original purple-ish artwork are fine, though the arrangements have always sounded a bit quiet compared to most D&B even from that era, so a lot of people keep waiting/looking for a louder version that does not and will never exist.

I dunno, as I mentioned upthread, to me the 2008 remaster sounds pretty much exactly like he added some loudness to earlier version.

Also, if you have both the 1995 version (purple cover) and the 1996 version (pinkish cover), does the latter one really sound different? I only own the pinkish 1996 disc and 2008 remastered disc, but I've always thought the pink 1996 version is simply a reissue of the 1995 version with a tweaked tracklist, not a remaster?

Manchester store takes a side.

https://boomkat.com/products/timeless-25-year-anniversary-edition

(last paragraph of the product description is what I refer to btw.)

These are the VIPs and mixes on the third disc.

Timeless (Instrumental)
Kemistry (VIP Mix)
Angel (Grooverider Re-edit)
State Of Mind (VIP Mix)
Still Life (VIP Mix)(The Latino Dego In Me)
Saint Darkie
Inner City Life (4 Hero's Part 2 'Leave the planet mix')
[re:jazz] - Inner City Life
Sensual

tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimelesssssssssssssssssss